China-Australia Free Trade Agreement

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (14:49): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister advise the house what the China–Australia Free Trade Agreement means for education in South Australia?

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE (Wright—Minister for Education and Child Development) (14:49): One of Australia's largest exports to China is education services, worth around $4 billion in 2013. In South Australia, we have a proven track record of exporting education services, and I am advised that in 2013 it was worth close to $1 billion in export earnings for the state's economy.

Education is our largest service export, greater even than tourism. Having recently made a trip to China, it is obvious that the potential market for our goods and services is almost boundless. We visited five cities in five days: Guangzhou on Monday, Shanghai on Tuesday, Changzhou on Wednesday, Jinan on Thursday and Beijing on Friday. There were around 20 school visits, meetings and official functions involved in this trip. A new school, the Beijing Bacui Bilingual School, signed up to teach our SACE to their year 12 students. They already have around 90 students lined up to undertake the SACE and are aiming to have around 500 students in the next few years.

Chinese educators are attracted to the SACE for a number of reasons including: VET counting towards the achievement of SACE, English as a second language subject specifically tailored towards success at university, recognition of the SACE by universities worldwide, and, importantly, the critical thinking skills embedded in subjects like the Research Project. It is possible that the new free trade agreement will provide the means through which Chinese students can study SACE-accredited VET, as it guarantees market access for Australian education providers to China's higher education market, including vocational and technical education.

As a result of my trip in early September, a delegation from the Shandong provincial education department will be in Adelaide later this month, and the vice-chairman and executive director of the Shanghai Xiehe Education Institute is currently in Adelaide further exploring the possibility of adopting our SACE in their schools. He is very well briefed, very interested and here to have a look at the quality control and moderation of our SACE while it is underway.

To give the house some idea of what the potential is, this company owns about 30 high-end private schools of around 5,000 students each. The company opens a new school every year or so. The free trade agreement states that Australia and China will continue to discuss options to facilitate student and teacher exchanges between both countries and increase the marketing and recruitment opportunities for Australian education providers in China. We will obviously be pursuing these opportunities.

What was very apparent in our discussions was the strong interest and recognition of the Research Project. That has been the subject of some criticism and attempts to diminish the impact of the Research Project in some quarters. We know it reflects 21^st century learning and is reflected in many jurisdictions around the world. Let's hope that this criticism diminishes and let's hope these achievements go some way towards silencing these naysayers.